Love or Power?
Or Why Theological Formation?
I’m reading a book right now called Warriors of God: Richard the Lionhart and Saladin in the Third Crusade. I’ve always been fascinated by the Crusades perhaps because it is such an amazing example of how Christian faith can become so terribly misconstrued. The author, James Reston Jr., tells the story of the slow process whereby the gospel of Jesus and the cross was transformed into a religion of violence. The Crusaders loved and worshipped a God who they believed called for the death of the heathen. They transformed the cross into a sword. They chose a religion of power rather than a gospel of love. Power is seductive, self-sacrificial love is, well, self-sacrificial love. Who enjoys self-sacrifice?
Muslims still resent Christians for the Crusades. When the Crusaders finally conquered Jerusalem in the summer of 1099, they virtually wiped out every living creature in the city; both the Jews and Muslims. They wept tears of joy and sang the Te Deum afterward. Saladin the Muslim displayed a more Christ-like compassion later when he took the city back again and allowed virtually all the occupants to go for a fee. Several thousand of those unable to pay were sold into slavery but the rest were allowed to leave the city. The Bishop of Jerusalem scraped the gold off the walls of the temple, not to pay the fee for those would could not pay for theselves, but to preserve the riches for the church. Many poor could have been spared, but as a consequence of the bishop’s heartlessness, they were sold into slavery.
How can the gospel be so misconstrued? What lessons do past abuses of power teach today? Power is as seductive today as it was in 1099. In the gospel, we encounter a God who has chosen the way of self-sacrificial love rather than violence. The cross is not just a symbol. It is a reminder of God’s choice to take the brunt of human wickedness and its punishment to let the guilty go free. We need to see this for what it is: a rejection of violence and a choice for love. To choose power is to reject this gospel.
But the role of the church is to do more than to teach the cross in terms of history and theology. We are called to do the more difficult work of shaping our lives by the gospel. Every choice for violence is a rejection of the spirit of the Savior. Spiritual formation takes seriously the task of shaping each believer into the image of God’s self-giving love. This is the task Jesus left for the church. This is the meaning of Jesus’ command to his disciples to take up their cross and follow. The Crusades remind us of how tragically the church can go astray. Similar dangers remain whenever Christians choose something other than the narrow way of Jesus.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Toward a Theology of World Religions
This I wrote for a sermon on world religions and inter-faith conversation. I did a sermon series on world religions in 2006 and thought I would post this here.
The Issue at Hand
At some point in our lives, we all encounter people of differing religions. Our children will learn about other religions in school and will often have friends of different religions. Would you believe that Somerset has a Mosque and that Johanna had Hindu and Muslim friends in her class. I used to eat with Johanna and talk to her Indian Hindu friend Kodgil. We live in a world that is very different from the world we grew up in. Yet many of us know very little about the other major world religions and some of us know only a slanted version.
It is essential, in light of this fact, to seek to understand other religions better and to build bridges of understanding. How can we reach out to those with the message of Jesus if we have absolutely no idea what they believe? We are going to examine the five major religions of the world. But I’m going to start, in this sermon, talking about how we think about this? How can we be faithful to our Christian heritage and yet be openhearted with those of other religions? This can be threatening because we are forced to ask, “What if there is truth in other religions? Can my faith withstand serious consideration of other religions?” We should all feel a little uncomfortable but that doesn’t mean we should not ask these questions. We really must.
I have this experience often in class. When I lecture on Confucian, Platonic or Stoic thought, you would be amazed how many of the more devout Christian kids perk up. I’ll often say, “This sounds surprisingly familiar, doesn’t it?” “Yeah, it sounds very Christian” is their response. “Well, you aren’t the first to notice,” I respond. Christians have been reading Plato and the Stoics from the start. Virtually every Christian theologian in the early church had been schooled in Plato and the Stoics and quoted them with great regularity and fervor. They were plundering Egypt – that is, they were taking the very best of their cultural heritage and applying it to their Christian worldview.
The Problem: The Uniqueness of Jesus
On the other hand, people can go way overboard here. We need to remember that Jesus claimed to be – and the church confesses Jesus to be – the unique Son of God. “No one comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6). All religions which claim to have something true to say, must, of necessity, also say something about the untruthfulness of other religions and philosophies. You can hardly get out of this – and it is true of anything claimed to be true in any area of life – not just religion. Many devout Christians are worried about Jesus’ exclusive claims to deity and truth and simply do not have the heart to agree with what Jesus himself seems to have claimed for himself.
Jesus was unique in his qualifications as the son of God – the one “whom the prophets foretold” (Acts 3:18)
Jesus is unique in his achievements – “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Act 4:12)
Jesus is unique in his resurrection – “The one whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 4:10).
Key Point - The uniqueness in who he is and his efficacy as our savior from sin lies at the heart of Christian faith. This brings up two questions.
What must we say about other religions? Are they completely without truth? If there is truth in them, from whence does it come? Why such diversity?
What about those who have never heard? Are they all going to hell? None?
What about Other Religions?
Does the fact that Jesus is the unique Son of God and Savior of the world imply that all those outside of Christian revelation are completely misguided? One way of saying this is as follows: While in Christ we have infallible truth, outside of the Church are truths which can be instructive and of value. These truths arise from several facts.
1) Everyone in a universe that shouts the glory of God. The Psalmist said, “The heavens declare God’s glory.”
2) Everyone is made in God’s image (Gen 1:27) which gives them a certain conscience and knowledge of right and wrong. Every religions has something like a golden rule. Paul in Rom. 2 tells of those who do not know the actual law of Moses but who fulfill the law of God written on their hearts. Job was seen by the early church as a gentile who fulfilled God’s laws written on his heart and was blameless before God.
3) every heart hungers for God and for salvation.
4) In Methodism we talk about the prevenient grace of God which works in all persons drawing them to the truth of Christ. We not only know the laws by nature, we have a certain ability to understand and comply. Methodists have traditionally called this prevenient grace.
In other words, when we think about other religions, we do not think about people who have absolutely no access to divine Grace. Traditional theology tells us otherwise. Let me put this differently. CS Lewis in Mere Christianity says that when he was an atheist, he was forced by his worldview to be intolerant of all religions. They were all fundamentally false and misguided about the basic truth of reality. There is no god or gods or God or spirit or angels or forces or anything but matter. When he became a Christian he could take a more tolerant liberal view about other religions as well. While he might not agree with the understandings of Muslim about the nature of the deity and the questions of God’s incarnation in Christ, he could agree with the Muslim on many things. God exists, is personal, and demands humility and divine service. The same is true of all other religions. Becoming a Christian helped him take a more liberal view of other religions.
Bishop Lesslie Newbiggin was a bishop on South India for forty years and wrote extensively about world religions. He knew many persons who had converted to Christianity from other religions. He noted that they experienced both continuity and discontinuity. They had a clear sense that they had to serve Christ and Christ alone. Yet they also knew that it had been Jesus who was dealing with them all along in the pre-Christian searching.
Why the Diversity?
If this is the case, why so many different religions? People believe very different things about God; surely God could have made clear which is the right path. To some people, the sheer number of religious options shows that religion is a human invention. Yet, the fact that virtually all human beings have religions or spiritual quests of some sort point to the reality of God and the fact that God made us to long for him. The spiritual longings which are so ubiquitous is a fact itself that cries out for explanation and the best explanation for it is simple: God made us in his image and shaped us to live in relationship with Him.
The multiplicity of opinion is to be expected. Adam Hamilton points out that often, when he sees a movie with his wife, and discusses it later, he wonders if they saw the same movie! They both experienced it so differently and thought of such different meanings to the exact same film. Paul tells us, “We know only in part . . . For now we see in a mirror dimly” (I Cor 13:9, 12). God allows religious differences, in part the way a parent lets a child struggle to learn. If you are teaching your children how to spell, you don’t say, “pencil – now that is p, e, n, c, i, l.” They would never learn to spell. You have to let them struggle to learn. I think in all religions we see God allowing humans to struggle with the ultimate questions of life. God could simply open the heavens and say, “Look, you humans. Christ is my son and you all need to be saved by believing in him.” God could do that but chooses not to. He wants us to struggle, we who see in the mirror darkly. Religious diversity is part of that struggle.
We see this struggle right in the pages of the Bible. If you were in our OT class, it has been something of a theme of the class. You can see the development of ideas and thinking about God right in the pages of the Bible. You have to close your eyes not to see it. God choose Abraham to follow him, even thought Abraham was certainly not a full monotheist the way Isaiah was. Moses brought the laws of God on Mt. Sinai but is constantly updating the law for new situations as they arise. God gave the law – you would think it would be perfect from the start. But Moses has to go back to God and say, “What about this?” And God gives a more defined law (for example: Num 27:1-11 and 36:1-13). It happens over and over. Jesus adds new light to what was previously known about God.
How Should we View Other Religions?
Did you realize that only 1/3 of the world’s population have an affiliation to Christianity. Two thirds of the world’s population are not Christians. They long to know truth and seek to serve God and their fellow humans as they best understand. God formed these persons also from their mother’s womb as Ps 139 notes. So what about other religions: Will they be saved? Here are three perspectives.
The Pluralist Perspective claims that all religions are equally valid paths to the Ultimate Reality of the universe. All religions are at their core saying and believing and experiencing the same divine reality in the world. “Your truth is true for you if it is honestly held and internally consistent.”
This has problems for me for three reasons. First, it fails to be faithful to the uniqueness of Jesus we outlined above. If Jesus is the unique Son of God, that truth must trump all other truths and be of ultimate importance. Second, I don’t think this really honors other religions. If a Muslim hears a religious pluralist, he isn’t going to agree and say, “Yes, Islam is really teaching the same thing as Christianity.” A Hindu may come closer to agreeing but in the end he’ll want to say, “Yes, but Hinduism is not the same as your religion. We believe things that are fundamentally different.” While the pluralist wants to honor other religions, he fails to do so. Thirdly, different religions teach exactly the opposite things in many regards. The Muslim fundamentalist who believes that Mohammed was Allah’s prophet doesn’t have much in common with the Theravada Buddhist who doesn’t believe in a deity of any type at all. These religions cannot be boiled down to an essential unity.
The Exclusivist Perspective is at the other end of the spectrum. It states simply that those who do not believe in Jesus will all go to hell out of sheer necessity. It does not matter how devout they are or how closely they follow moral beliefs and lifestyles. They simply had not been given the opportunity to believe in Jesus who is the only way, the only truth, the only life (John 14:6 again). We will consider this passage again.
The Inclusivist Perspective says that Jesus is in fact the only basis of salvation – no one is saved other than through the work of Christ – but that one does not have to know Jesus during this life to be saved by Him. Salvation is available to those who profess other religions but by means of the hidden Christ. One who throws themselves upon God’s mercy in this life is essentially throwing themselves into the arms of Christ without knowing it. This person knows that they have done wrong and feel contrition about this wrong. They do not understand historically who Jesus was and what Jesus has done to solve the problem, but God judges them as if they did understand. God judges them on the basis of what they know.
The biblical text comes in Luke 18: the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. The publican or tax collector simply beat his chest and said, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” He never believed in Jesus or knew about Jesus in Jesus own parable. But Jesus says that he went up from the temple justified before God that day. This is an important truth: the essential prayer of all those who repent is, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” This prayer activates God’s saving grace which historically depends upon Jesus even when the person does not fully understand this. I must add that John Wesley was an inclusivist and on several occasions wrote about this.
The Last Battle
Adam Hamilton in his book of World Religions quotes CS Lewis’ The Last Battle. In this tale, Emeth (which means truth in Hebrew although I don’t know if Lewis intended this) meets Aslan in final judgment. Emeth had been a devoted worshipper of Tash – a different deity - his whole life. When he comes face to face with Aslan (who represents Jesus) he expects to be put to death. He realizes he’s been mistaken and worshipping the wrong deity. Here is his encounter with Aslan.
He touched my forehead . . . and said, “Son thou art welcome.” But I said, “Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash.” He answered, “Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash I account as service done to me.” Then I asked, “Are Thou and Tash one?” The Lion growled so that the earth shook . . . and said, “It is false. Not because he and I are one but because he and I are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. . . “ I said, “I have been seeking Tash all my days. . .” The Glorious one said, “Unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”
Paul in Phil. 2:10 says “every knee will bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Those who didn’t know the Lordship of Christ in this life will, as Emeth did, when he encounter Jesus will realize that they were worshipping Christ implicitly all along. You may ask, “Then why should we obey the commission of Jesus to make Christian disciples of all nations?” We should tell them because Christ is indeed the way, the truth and the life; he gives us the most complete picture and relationship with God available. We offer Christ to provide assurance of salvation and simply because Jesus commanded us to do so.
Conclusion
My desire for you is that you will struggle with these questions. I’m not an expert but I’ve read and thought about these questions a lot. I’ve chosen to say, “I not only can learn about other religions respectfully, I can learn from then in ways that are helpful to my own faith walk. I can do that and be absolutely faithful to Jesus and to my Christian heritage.”
My hope is that you will be openhearted. Remember that we will also discover where other religions contradict Christian teachings and we will humbly reject them at that point. I hope that this will help you grow in your Christian walk and help us all develop the kinds of spiritual sensitivity that helps us be better witnesses to the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. We can only effectively bear witness to Christ if we have faithfully understood what other religions presently believe. I believe we set out on this pilgrimage out of a direct desire to be faithful to Jesus and to his calling to bear witness to his name.
The Issue at Hand
At some point in our lives, we all encounter people of differing religions. Our children will learn about other religions in school and will often have friends of different religions. Would you believe that Somerset has a Mosque and that Johanna had Hindu and Muslim friends in her class. I used to eat with Johanna and talk to her Indian Hindu friend Kodgil. We live in a world that is very different from the world we grew up in. Yet many of us know very little about the other major world religions and some of us know only a slanted version.
It is essential, in light of this fact, to seek to understand other religions better and to build bridges of understanding. How can we reach out to those with the message of Jesus if we have absolutely no idea what they believe? We are going to examine the five major religions of the world. But I’m going to start, in this sermon, talking about how we think about this? How can we be faithful to our Christian heritage and yet be openhearted with those of other religions? This can be threatening because we are forced to ask, “What if there is truth in other religions? Can my faith withstand serious consideration of other religions?” We should all feel a little uncomfortable but that doesn’t mean we should not ask these questions. We really must.
I have this experience often in class. When I lecture on Confucian, Platonic or Stoic thought, you would be amazed how many of the more devout Christian kids perk up. I’ll often say, “This sounds surprisingly familiar, doesn’t it?” “Yeah, it sounds very Christian” is their response. “Well, you aren’t the first to notice,” I respond. Christians have been reading Plato and the Stoics from the start. Virtually every Christian theologian in the early church had been schooled in Plato and the Stoics and quoted them with great regularity and fervor. They were plundering Egypt – that is, they were taking the very best of their cultural heritage and applying it to their Christian worldview.
The Problem: The Uniqueness of Jesus
On the other hand, people can go way overboard here. We need to remember that Jesus claimed to be – and the church confesses Jesus to be – the unique Son of God. “No one comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6). All religions which claim to have something true to say, must, of necessity, also say something about the untruthfulness of other religions and philosophies. You can hardly get out of this – and it is true of anything claimed to be true in any area of life – not just religion. Many devout Christians are worried about Jesus’ exclusive claims to deity and truth and simply do not have the heart to agree with what Jesus himself seems to have claimed for himself.
Jesus was unique in his qualifications as the son of God – the one “whom the prophets foretold” (Acts 3:18)
Jesus is unique in his achievements – “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Act 4:12)
Jesus is unique in his resurrection – “The one whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 4:10).
Key Point - The uniqueness in who he is and his efficacy as our savior from sin lies at the heart of Christian faith. This brings up two questions.
What must we say about other religions? Are they completely without truth? If there is truth in them, from whence does it come? Why such diversity?
What about those who have never heard? Are they all going to hell? None?
What about Other Religions?
Does the fact that Jesus is the unique Son of God and Savior of the world imply that all those outside of Christian revelation are completely misguided? One way of saying this is as follows: While in Christ we have infallible truth, outside of the Church are truths which can be instructive and of value. These truths arise from several facts.
1) Everyone in a universe that shouts the glory of God. The Psalmist said, “The heavens declare God’s glory.”
2) Everyone is made in God’s image (Gen 1:27) which gives them a certain conscience and knowledge of right and wrong. Every religions has something like a golden rule. Paul in Rom. 2 tells of those who do not know the actual law of Moses but who fulfill the law of God written on their hearts. Job was seen by the early church as a gentile who fulfilled God’s laws written on his heart and was blameless before God.
3) every heart hungers for God and for salvation.
4) In Methodism we talk about the prevenient grace of God which works in all persons drawing them to the truth of Christ. We not only know the laws by nature, we have a certain ability to understand and comply. Methodists have traditionally called this prevenient grace.
In other words, when we think about other religions, we do not think about people who have absolutely no access to divine Grace. Traditional theology tells us otherwise. Let me put this differently. CS Lewis in Mere Christianity says that when he was an atheist, he was forced by his worldview to be intolerant of all religions. They were all fundamentally false and misguided about the basic truth of reality. There is no god or gods or God or spirit or angels or forces or anything but matter. When he became a Christian he could take a more tolerant liberal view about other religions as well. While he might not agree with the understandings of Muslim about the nature of the deity and the questions of God’s incarnation in Christ, he could agree with the Muslim on many things. God exists, is personal, and demands humility and divine service. The same is true of all other religions. Becoming a Christian helped him take a more liberal view of other religions.
Bishop Lesslie Newbiggin was a bishop on South India for forty years and wrote extensively about world religions. He knew many persons who had converted to Christianity from other religions. He noted that they experienced both continuity and discontinuity. They had a clear sense that they had to serve Christ and Christ alone. Yet they also knew that it had been Jesus who was dealing with them all along in the pre-Christian searching.
Why the Diversity?
If this is the case, why so many different religions? People believe very different things about God; surely God could have made clear which is the right path. To some people, the sheer number of religious options shows that religion is a human invention. Yet, the fact that virtually all human beings have religions or spiritual quests of some sort point to the reality of God and the fact that God made us to long for him. The spiritual longings which are so ubiquitous is a fact itself that cries out for explanation and the best explanation for it is simple: God made us in his image and shaped us to live in relationship with Him.
The multiplicity of opinion is to be expected. Adam Hamilton points out that often, when he sees a movie with his wife, and discusses it later, he wonders if they saw the same movie! They both experienced it so differently and thought of such different meanings to the exact same film. Paul tells us, “We know only in part . . . For now we see in a mirror dimly” (I Cor 13:9, 12). God allows religious differences, in part the way a parent lets a child struggle to learn. If you are teaching your children how to spell, you don’t say, “pencil – now that is p, e, n, c, i, l.” They would never learn to spell. You have to let them struggle to learn. I think in all religions we see God allowing humans to struggle with the ultimate questions of life. God could simply open the heavens and say, “Look, you humans. Christ is my son and you all need to be saved by believing in him.” God could do that but chooses not to. He wants us to struggle, we who see in the mirror darkly. Religious diversity is part of that struggle.
We see this struggle right in the pages of the Bible. If you were in our OT class, it has been something of a theme of the class. You can see the development of ideas and thinking about God right in the pages of the Bible. You have to close your eyes not to see it. God choose Abraham to follow him, even thought Abraham was certainly not a full monotheist the way Isaiah was. Moses brought the laws of God on Mt. Sinai but is constantly updating the law for new situations as they arise. God gave the law – you would think it would be perfect from the start. But Moses has to go back to God and say, “What about this?” And God gives a more defined law (for example: Num 27:1-11 and 36:1-13). It happens over and over. Jesus adds new light to what was previously known about God.
How Should we View Other Religions?
Did you realize that only 1/3 of the world’s population have an affiliation to Christianity. Two thirds of the world’s population are not Christians. They long to know truth and seek to serve God and their fellow humans as they best understand. God formed these persons also from their mother’s womb as Ps 139 notes. So what about other religions: Will they be saved? Here are three perspectives.
The Pluralist Perspective claims that all religions are equally valid paths to the Ultimate Reality of the universe. All religions are at their core saying and believing and experiencing the same divine reality in the world. “Your truth is true for you if it is honestly held and internally consistent.”
This has problems for me for three reasons. First, it fails to be faithful to the uniqueness of Jesus we outlined above. If Jesus is the unique Son of God, that truth must trump all other truths and be of ultimate importance. Second, I don’t think this really honors other religions. If a Muslim hears a religious pluralist, he isn’t going to agree and say, “Yes, Islam is really teaching the same thing as Christianity.” A Hindu may come closer to agreeing but in the end he’ll want to say, “Yes, but Hinduism is not the same as your religion. We believe things that are fundamentally different.” While the pluralist wants to honor other religions, he fails to do so. Thirdly, different religions teach exactly the opposite things in many regards. The Muslim fundamentalist who believes that Mohammed was Allah’s prophet doesn’t have much in common with the Theravada Buddhist who doesn’t believe in a deity of any type at all. These religions cannot be boiled down to an essential unity.
The Exclusivist Perspective is at the other end of the spectrum. It states simply that those who do not believe in Jesus will all go to hell out of sheer necessity. It does not matter how devout they are or how closely they follow moral beliefs and lifestyles. They simply had not been given the opportunity to believe in Jesus who is the only way, the only truth, the only life (John 14:6 again). We will consider this passage again.
The Inclusivist Perspective says that Jesus is in fact the only basis of salvation – no one is saved other than through the work of Christ – but that one does not have to know Jesus during this life to be saved by Him. Salvation is available to those who profess other religions but by means of the hidden Christ. One who throws themselves upon God’s mercy in this life is essentially throwing themselves into the arms of Christ without knowing it. This person knows that they have done wrong and feel contrition about this wrong. They do not understand historically who Jesus was and what Jesus has done to solve the problem, but God judges them as if they did understand. God judges them on the basis of what they know.
The biblical text comes in Luke 18: the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. The publican or tax collector simply beat his chest and said, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” He never believed in Jesus or knew about Jesus in Jesus own parable. But Jesus says that he went up from the temple justified before God that day. This is an important truth: the essential prayer of all those who repent is, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” This prayer activates God’s saving grace which historically depends upon Jesus even when the person does not fully understand this. I must add that John Wesley was an inclusivist and on several occasions wrote about this.
The Last Battle
Adam Hamilton in his book of World Religions quotes CS Lewis’ The Last Battle. In this tale, Emeth (which means truth in Hebrew although I don’t know if Lewis intended this) meets Aslan in final judgment. Emeth had been a devoted worshipper of Tash – a different deity - his whole life. When he comes face to face with Aslan (who represents Jesus) he expects to be put to death. He realizes he’s been mistaken and worshipping the wrong deity. Here is his encounter with Aslan.
He touched my forehead . . . and said, “Son thou art welcome.” But I said, “Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash.” He answered, “Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash I account as service done to me.” Then I asked, “Are Thou and Tash one?” The Lion growled so that the earth shook . . . and said, “It is false. Not because he and I are one but because he and I are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. . . “ I said, “I have been seeking Tash all my days. . .” The Glorious one said, “Unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”
Paul in Phil. 2:10 says “every knee will bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Those who didn’t know the Lordship of Christ in this life will, as Emeth did, when he encounter Jesus will realize that they were worshipping Christ implicitly all along. You may ask, “Then why should we obey the commission of Jesus to make Christian disciples of all nations?” We should tell them because Christ is indeed the way, the truth and the life; he gives us the most complete picture and relationship with God available. We offer Christ to provide assurance of salvation and simply because Jesus commanded us to do so.
Conclusion
My desire for you is that you will struggle with these questions. I’m not an expert but I’ve read and thought about these questions a lot. I’ve chosen to say, “I not only can learn about other religions respectfully, I can learn from then in ways that are helpful to my own faith walk. I can do that and be absolutely faithful to Jesus and to my Christian heritage.”
My hope is that you will be openhearted. Remember that we will also discover where other religions contradict Christian teachings and we will humbly reject them at that point. I hope that this will help you grow in your Christian walk and help us all develop the kinds of spiritual sensitivity that helps us be better witnesses to the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. We can only effectively bear witness to Christ if we have faithfully understood what other religions presently believe. I believe we set out on this pilgrimage out of a direct desire to be faithful to Jesus and to his calling to bear witness to his name.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Biblical Balance and Health Care Reform
The most substantive reason I know of to reject a health care reform bill is that of excessive expense. We are over-spending by the gazillions at present and the health care reform would be costly and add to our debt most likely. However, we all know that overspending - like any spending - is a matter of priorities. We can afford what we value. While I'm no pacifist and believe we need a reasonably strong military, I do question our priorities in the relation between military and health care spending. We have an overwhelmingly powerful military while many middle class Americans have to declare bankruptcy because of cancer and other illnesses. Its about priorities.
It would benefit us as a nation to lessen the size of our armed forces. This would have prevented our voyeurism in Iraq and saved us billions!. We should focus on our real strength - our economy and our devotion to democracy. We truly have a unique (God-given) role as Americans to exemplify human dignity, freedom and democracy. It seems our Christian values would lead us down this pathway of decreasing priority upon massive military power (Blessed are the peacemakers . . . ) and increasing priority upon providing health care for our populace (based on Jesus' model of healing and his teaching to love your neighbor as you love yourself).
Many Christians insist on an overwhelmingly powerful military and a reduced health care system (we're the only developed nation that has no national plan!). Perhaps we are failing to allow our faith to truly inform our moral choices and priorities. We have lost the blessing of which our Lord spoke to trust in our own horses and chariots.
It would benefit us as a nation to lessen the size of our armed forces. This would have prevented our voyeurism in Iraq and saved us billions!. We should focus on our real strength - our economy and our devotion to democracy. We truly have a unique (God-given) role as Americans to exemplify human dignity, freedom and democracy. It seems our Christian values would lead us down this pathway of decreasing priority upon massive military power (Blessed are the peacemakers . . . ) and increasing priority upon providing health care for our populace (based on Jesus' model of healing and his teaching to love your neighbor as you love yourself).
Many Christians insist on an overwhelmingly powerful military and a reduced health care system (we're the only developed nation that has no national plan!). Perhaps we are failing to allow our faith to truly inform our moral choices and priorities. We have lost the blessing of which our Lord spoke to trust in our own horses and chariots.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Christian Witness and Health Care Reform
Christian Witness and Health Care Reform
The purpose of this short essay (one page) is to think about how our faith should/can inform the health care debate. It continues to amaze me how many people of faith are opposed to health care reform and resist it religiously. Some studies indicate that up to 30 percent of our present health care costs could be eliminated with a more efficient single-payer delivery system. European countries consistently spend significantly less of their GNP on health care. Many Americans go bankrupt each year for the bad sense to get cancer. Yet the fear-mongering continues. More than fear-mongering, we have fear-based thinking that paralyzes us from taking action toward healing a broken system that is only getting more expensive and cost-prohibitive. This situation demands the Christian community exercise more faith than fear - always a good 'Jesus' thing to do.
I’m a Bible scholar and dedicated to thinking inside the biblical narrative as a Christian. Of course the Bible doesn’t command one particular system of delivering health care. But I taught a class on the prophets of the Old Testament last year and spent much time absorbing their message and listening closely to their pleas for justice and mercy. O fundamental theme is that faithfulness to God includes or even demands concern for the weak and the helpless. Amos (in 2:7 and many other places) condemns those who trample on the poor and oppressed. Zechariah 7:10 commands, “Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.”
Defending the rights of the poor is a central theme in Isaiah starting with 1:17, “Isaiah 1:17 with “Seek justice . . . encourage the oppressed.” Jeremiah 5:28 condemns leaders who have grown sleek and fat and no longer care about the poor and oppressed. The unique characteristic of the God of the prophets is that he cares about the poor and opposes those who are rich who abuse the poor. For the prophets, lack of concern for the poor of the land is a central means by which one could judge the piety of another. The God of the prophets in lordly freedom joins his future to a gaggle of slaves in Egypt. The gods of no other nation could do such a thing. This is absolutely unique: Great nations have powerful gods and vice versa. But Yahweh associates with the poor and created even them in his image. In typical ancient mythology, it is only the king and his family who are in the divine image.
As Christians, we are called to participate in the joyful resurrection power of Jesus by doing the work of Jesus. His work often centered on healing which was a physical demonstration of the Kingdom of God and the sacred worth of all persons. Jesus' primary ethical demand was to love God first and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. He illustrated this with the Good Samaritan parable - which functions frankly as a nice image of the self-giving sacrifice required to live the Jesus' way. Fundamental to Christian narrative is the story of a God who sacrificed his own Son to bring spiritual and physical wholeness (true shalom). Christians who want to enter into this narrative (which is what it means to take up your cross and follow Christ) should be willing to do the same. It requires faith, not fear, to make this journey.
Lacking access to health care is deeply dehumanizing. Christ would condemn our lack of concern for those made in the divine image. The problem we have is that we are bound by fear. What if health care reform will be bad for me personally? What if my taxes go up? What if the national debt increases? People of faith are so fearful and lacking in prophetic Christ-like passion for what is clearly and unambiguously a better social good.
A personal story. When my wife Kitty was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago, we were seriously affected due to her inadequate insurance plan. Thankfully we did not have to declare bankruptcy. God is good and I’m grateful. However, I spoke with her oncologist and asked him (several years ago) if he supported a national health plan. He said yes. When I asked why, he said, “I see what cancer does to hard working families. Small business owners like plumbers, carpenters, and landscapers often have to declare bankruptcy. These are good hard-working people. The present system is unacceptable as it is and only getting more expensive.”
Call your congressperson and ask that they vote for health care reform when they return from the break – something that would be available to all Americans. We are the only developed country in the world without it. Canadians must think we are a bunch of Neanderthals. BTW – it’s a lie that they flock down to the USA because of lack of availability. It’s like a lightning strike – very rare but when it happens, everyone talks about it.
The purpose of this short essay (one page) is to think about how our faith should/can inform the health care debate. It continues to amaze me how many people of faith are opposed to health care reform and resist it religiously. Some studies indicate that up to 30 percent of our present health care costs could be eliminated with a more efficient single-payer delivery system. European countries consistently spend significantly less of their GNP on health care. Many Americans go bankrupt each year for the bad sense to get cancer. Yet the fear-mongering continues. More than fear-mongering, we have fear-based thinking that paralyzes us from taking action toward healing a broken system that is only getting more expensive and cost-prohibitive. This situation demands the Christian community exercise more faith than fear - always a good 'Jesus' thing to do.
I’m a Bible scholar and dedicated to thinking inside the biblical narrative as a Christian. Of course the Bible doesn’t command one particular system of delivering health care. But I taught a class on the prophets of the Old Testament last year and spent much time absorbing their message and listening closely to their pleas for justice and mercy. O fundamental theme is that faithfulness to God includes or even demands concern for the weak and the helpless. Amos (in 2:7 and many other places) condemns those who trample on the poor and oppressed. Zechariah 7:10 commands, “Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.”
Defending the rights of the poor is a central theme in Isaiah starting with 1:17, “Isaiah 1:17 with “Seek justice . . . encourage the oppressed.” Jeremiah 5:28 condemns leaders who have grown sleek and fat and no longer care about the poor and oppressed. The unique characteristic of the God of the prophets is that he cares about the poor and opposes those who are rich who abuse the poor. For the prophets, lack of concern for the poor of the land is a central means by which one could judge the piety of another. The God of the prophets in lordly freedom joins his future to a gaggle of slaves in Egypt. The gods of no other nation could do such a thing. This is absolutely unique: Great nations have powerful gods and vice versa. But Yahweh associates with the poor and created even them in his image. In typical ancient mythology, it is only the king and his family who are in the divine image.
As Christians, we are called to participate in the joyful resurrection power of Jesus by doing the work of Jesus. His work often centered on healing which was a physical demonstration of the Kingdom of God and the sacred worth of all persons. Jesus' primary ethical demand was to love God first and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. He illustrated this with the Good Samaritan parable - which functions frankly as a nice image of the self-giving sacrifice required to live the Jesus' way. Fundamental to Christian narrative is the story of a God who sacrificed his own Son to bring spiritual and physical wholeness (true shalom). Christians who want to enter into this narrative (which is what it means to take up your cross and follow Christ) should be willing to do the same. It requires faith, not fear, to make this journey.
Lacking access to health care is deeply dehumanizing. Christ would condemn our lack of concern for those made in the divine image. The problem we have is that we are bound by fear. What if health care reform will be bad for me personally? What if my taxes go up? What if the national debt increases? People of faith are so fearful and lacking in prophetic Christ-like passion for what is clearly and unambiguously a better social good.
A personal story. When my wife Kitty was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago, we were seriously affected due to her inadequate insurance plan. Thankfully we did not have to declare bankruptcy. God is good and I’m grateful. However, I spoke with her oncologist and asked him (several years ago) if he supported a national health plan. He said yes. When I asked why, he said, “I see what cancer does to hard working families. Small business owners like plumbers, carpenters, and landscapers often have to declare bankruptcy. These are good hard-working people. The present system is unacceptable as it is and only getting more expensive.”
Call your congressperson and ask that they vote for health care reform when they return from the break – something that would be available to all Americans. We are the only developed country in the world without it. Canadians must think we are a bunch of Neanderthals. BTW – it’s a lie that they flock down to the USA because of lack of availability. It’s like a lightning strike – very rare but when it happens, everyone talks about it.
Monday, August 10, 2009
The Flag and the Steeple
August 9, 2009
The Flag and the Steeple
Ok, I know Americans can be almost ridiculously patriotic. I know that sometimes Christianity can become the backdrop for this culture so that we confuse patriotism with religion. I know that American Christians sometime need to stretch themselves to be more aware of the broader world out there. But I’m amazed at the rancor with which some Christian thinkers disdain the American flag and believe it id sheer idolatry to allow flags to be displayed in churches or to sing a patriotic song in church. Some pastors, under the influence of this puritanical strain of this flag-free faith, have caused great conflict within congregations when they removed the flag from the sanctuary or refused to say the pledge in church during VBS. That will tork-off congregants like little else – not a smart thing for pastors to do.
Let’s think for a minute about church architecture and the placement of the flag. Most churches have the flag off in the corner of the sanctuary. It isn’t in the center, it doesn’t hide view of the cross, it doesn’t receive worshipful praise and adoration. Perhaps near patriotic holidays, Christians may sing a patriotic song. But the vast majority of songs sung are addressed to Christ as Lord and not the Lordship of Uncle Sam or the flag flying free. Most Christian I know are both happy to be Americans yet very appreciative of other cultures. Having a flag in church doesn’t necessarily make me less appreciative of the world church.
That being the case, I think the architecture, the placement and the hymnology all indicate that the inclusion of the flag and the patriotic element generally does not border on true idolatry. It is only reasonable that Christians express appreciation for their citizenship in a country that has allowed them great freedom and done them great good. While this is not central to our faith, it certainly has a reasonable background role. Paul expressed the importance of recognition of the powers of the state in Romans 13. Peter does the same in 1 Peter 2:12. If they could express appreciation for the beneficial role of the Roman state in the days of Nero, certainly we have reason to do the same. I do not believe having a flag in a sanctuary dedicated to the worship of the risen Lord Jesus comes any where near idolatry.
If you are a pastor, use the placement of the flag a teaching point. Use the scriptures I’ve mentioned. Our spiritual values and temporal values must coexist. The cross is central yet our love for country and appreciation for its freedoms is real. The cross is positioned at the top of the steeple. The flag is located in the narthex or sanctuary corner. Its placement says something about the placement of these values. We value and love both kingdoms, yet we worship and serve only our Creator. St. Paul and St. Peter would do the same.
The Flag and the Steeple
Ok, I know Americans can be almost ridiculously patriotic. I know that sometimes Christianity can become the backdrop for this culture so that we confuse patriotism with religion. I know that American Christians sometime need to stretch themselves to be more aware of the broader world out there. But I’m amazed at the rancor with which some Christian thinkers disdain the American flag and believe it id sheer idolatry to allow flags to be displayed in churches or to sing a patriotic song in church. Some pastors, under the influence of this puritanical strain of this flag-free faith, have caused great conflict within congregations when they removed the flag from the sanctuary or refused to say the pledge in church during VBS. That will tork-off congregants like little else – not a smart thing for pastors to do.
Let’s think for a minute about church architecture and the placement of the flag. Most churches have the flag off in the corner of the sanctuary. It isn’t in the center, it doesn’t hide view of the cross, it doesn’t receive worshipful praise and adoration. Perhaps near patriotic holidays, Christians may sing a patriotic song. But the vast majority of songs sung are addressed to Christ as Lord and not the Lordship of Uncle Sam or the flag flying free. Most Christian I know are both happy to be Americans yet very appreciative of other cultures. Having a flag in church doesn’t necessarily make me less appreciative of the world church.
That being the case, I think the architecture, the placement and the hymnology all indicate that the inclusion of the flag and the patriotic element generally does not border on true idolatry. It is only reasonable that Christians express appreciation for their citizenship in a country that has allowed them great freedom and done them great good. While this is not central to our faith, it certainly has a reasonable background role. Paul expressed the importance of recognition of the powers of the state in Romans 13. Peter does the same in 1 Peter 2:12. If they could express appreciation for the beneficial role of the Roman state in the days of Nero, certainly we have reason to do the same. I do not believe having a flag in a sanctuary dedicated to the worship of the risen Lord Jesus comes any where near idolatry.
If you are a pastor, use the placement of the flag a teaching point. Use the scriptures I’ve mentioned. Our spiritual values and temporal values must coexist. The cross is central yet our love for country and appreciation for its freedoms is real. The cross is positioned at the top of the steeple. The flag is located in the narthex or sanctuary corner. Its placement says something about the placement of these values. We value and love both kingdoms, yet we worship and serve only our Creator. St. Paul and St. Peter would do the same.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
RVs in Yellowstone
RVs in Yellowstone
Ok, you can say I feel this only because I cannot afford one. But I'm really frustrated with R.V.'s. I just returned from a wonderful visit to Yellowstone National Park. RVs are everywhere and they get bigger each year.
Part of me would love to own one. The other part says, "hey, this is ridiculous! These behemoths get five miles a gallon!' In the old days, we camped, We rented cabins, we stayed in hotels. Today we drag hotels (nice hotel suites with kitchens!) around the country with us. Where is the sense in this?
I'm frustrated partly because I cannot afford one, partly because they take up way too much parking space at every parking lot (try getting around the Old Faithful parking any weekend in August!), but because of the energy consumption. I try to save energy by biking into work etc. What for? These people are sucking up more of the world's resources than hundreds of people like me! I'm outnumbered! Outdone! What about conservation? What about freedom from the domination of foreign oil?
Well, I'll continue to bike into work, and till my little garden and camp in my little tent. At least I get to hear creek at night - that is, when the RVs aren't idling nearby!
Ok, you can say I feel this only because I cannot afford one. But I'm really frustrated with R.V.'s. I just returned from a wonderful visit to Yellowstone National Park. RVs are everywhere and they get bigger each year.
Part of me would love to own one. The other part says, "hey, this is ridiculous! These behemoths get five miles a gallon!' In the old days, we camped, We rented cabins, we stayed in hotels. Today we drag hotels (nice hotel suites with kitchens!) around the country with us. Where is the sense in this?
I'm frustrated partly because I cannot afford one, partly because they take up way too much parking space at every parking lot (try getting around the Old Faithful parking any weekend in August!), but because of the energy consumption. I try to save energy by biking into work etc. What for? These people are sucking up more of the world's resources than hundreds of people like me! I'm outnumbered! Outdone! What about conservation? What about freedom from the domination of foreign oil?
Well, I'll continue to bike into work, and till my little garden and camp in my little tent. At least I get to hear creek at night - that is, when the RVs aren't idling nearby!
In Defense of Open Theism
I wrote this piece to respond to an article in Touchstone Magazine implying that Open Theism is a heresy.
I write to respond S.M. Hutchens recent article "Paradox Lost: The Easy Road to Heresy." He claims that Open Theology is a heresy which rejects the classical appreciation of the paradox by which God can have absolute knowledge of the future and yet permit free actions. He does so on the basis of Christology and Patristic thought. The overall argument seems to be that classical theologians rejoice in embracing certain paradoxes concerning God.
Open Theists are unwilling to embrace paradox due to excessive rationalism.
I believe open theism it is a fully orthodox option. To claim that God chooses to limit his knowledge of some future events to provide for genuine libertarian free-will does not necessarily contract the doctrine of divine omniscience. God knows all he chooses to know. The limitation is not imposed on God due to his finitude but self-imposed due to love. Open Theists base divine sovereignty not in God's absolute knowledge and control of every orbiting atom but in God's self-giving love as revealed on the cross.
A helpful distinction can be made between paradox (something that seems false but proves to be true) and contradiction (something that seems false because it cannot be true by nature). Open Theistis simply claim that free-will and absolute foreknowledge are non-compatible affirmations. This is simply a common-sense observation and not dangerous commitment to rationalism as Hutchens implies. Free-will arises from God's self-limitation
of some future events. It poses no fundamental challenge to God's
omniscience and omnipotence other than to say God is not able to do that which is fundamentally illogical. This goes against God's own nature.
God not only knows all he chooses to know about free future actions, God knows all the possibilities and probabilities. But sometimes free actions, as the scriptures clearly teach, surprise God himself, and he moderates his own responses accordingly to achieve his plan. God has millions of avenues to achieve his will on earth free-will notwithstanding. To affirm this only enhances God's sovereignty and glory.
A Bible professor of mine once made the comment while we were reading one of the many 'God regretted' kinds of passages that when the Bible says something repeatedly, eventually we do well to stop arguing and simply acquiesce. "Good theology is able to survive a reading of the Bible" he said. The church should never stop responding to scripture to articulate its vision of God. Patristic thought may have imbibed too deeply of the wells of Plotinus. It is time to allow scripture to speak for itself.
Joel Allen
Assistant Professor of Religion
Lambuth University
Jackson, TN
I write to respond S.M. Hutchens recent article "Paradox Lost: The Easy Road to Heresy." He claims that Open Theology is a heresy which rejects the classical appreciation of the paradox by which God can have absolute knowledge of the future and yet permit free actions. He does so on the basis of Christology and Patristic thought. The overall argument seems to be that classical theologians rejoice in embracing certain paradoxes concerning God.
Open Theists are unwilling to embrace paradox due to excessive rationalism.
I believe open theism it is a fully orthodox option. To claim that God chooses to limit his knowledge of some future events to provide for genuine libertarian free-will does not necessarily contract the doctrine of divine omniscience. God knows all he chooses to know. The limitation is not imposed on God due to his finitude but self-imposed due to love. Open Theists base divine sovereignty not in God's absolute knowledge and control of every orbiting atom but in God's self-giving love as revealed on the cross.
A helpful distinction can be made between paradox (something that seems false but proves to be true) and contradiction (something that seems false because it cannot be true by nature). Open Theistis simply claim that free-will and absolute foreknowledge are non-compatible affirmations. This is simply a common-sense observation and not dangerous commitment to rationalism as Hutchens implies. Free-will arises from God's self-limitation
of some future events. It poses no fundamental challenge to God's
omniscience and omnipotence other than to say God is not able to do that which is fundamentally illogical. This goes against God's own nature.
God not only knows all he chooses to know about free future actions, God knows all the possibilities and probabilities. But sometimes free actions, as the scriptures clearly teach, surprise God himself, and he moderates his own responses accordingly to achieve his plan. God has millions of avenues to achieve his will on earth free-will notwithstanding. To affirm this only enhances God's sovereignty and glory.
A Bible professor of mine once made the comment while we were reading one of the many 'God regretted' kinds of passages that when the Bible says something repeatedly, eventually we do well to stop arguing and simply acquiesce. "Good theology is able to survive a reading of the Bible" he said. The church should never stop responding to scripture to articulate its vision of God. Patristic thought may have imbibed too deeply of the wells of Plotinus. It is time to allow scripture to speak for itself.
Joel Allen
Assistant Professor of Religion
Lambuth University
Jackson, TN
Monday, August 3, 2009
I don't wannt be a Pharisee
This appeared in God's Politics, a blog associated with Sojourner's Magazine a few weeks back. It arose after working with students here at LU who seem to be addicted to describing the Pharisees in the most dark language - hypocrites who hated Jesus. While there is truly an offense to the Jews in the gospel (one which I am reluctant to soften), it seems to me Christians can work harder to appreciate those Pharisees. So here we are - 'I don't wanna be a Pharisee!'
In the fall of 1997, I began a graduate program in Bible at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the things that surprised me in studying the Bible with rabbinical students was the degree to which they perceived the New Testament to be fundamentally anti-Jewish. As an orthodox Christian, I found it troubling to hear the teachings of Jesus described as ‘anti-Jewish’ and as contributing factors to Jewish suffering. Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 23 – in which he calls the Pharisees hypocrites, blind-guides, children of hell and much more!– are felt more deeply by Jews than Christians sometimes realize. They know that the Pharisees were direct precursors to the rabbis who shaped the Mishnah which lies at the core of the Talmud.
This discomfort has been only accentuated in hearing Christian children sing silly camp-songs like, “I don’t want to be a Pharisee, ‘cuz they’re not fair, you see.” My daughter who is nine just asked me what I was writing about. When I said “the Pharisees” she responded in song, “I don’t want to be a Pharisee!” To my rabbinical student friends, this is the equivalent to saying, “I would never want to be a rabbi, because they are all a bunch of hypocrites.” A woman once asked me if Jews tire of having a religion made up only of rules and regulations. “It must be so tedious to be legalistic and not have the Holy Spirit.” It is out of these experiences that I wish to write to help Christians know how to think not only about what Jesus says about the Pharisees, but about how this relates to modern Judaism.
It is often said, and worth remembering, that Jesus criticized his contemporaries as an insider much as the prophets of old had done. The church which collected and cherished these teachings of Jesus did so as powerless underdogs. They could not have foreseen or imagined a triumphant Christianity which would later use such texts to justify acts of violence against Jewish neighbors as sometimes has occurred in the history of the Church. As one of my professors, Ellis Rivkin claimed, “The New Testament is not anti-Jewish because Jesus didn’t aim to destroy Israel but to purify it. It was later perverted by Christians who had meaner intentions.”
But more could be said. Was Jesus really right about the Pharisees? Were they hypocrites who didn’t practice what they preached (Matt 23:3)? Were they primarily concerned with spiritual showmanship but not spiritual authenticity (Matt 23:5-7)? Did they emphasize details of the law over the weightier issues like justice, mercy and faithfulness? Did they strain at gnats and swallow camels (23:23-24)? A quick answer might be, “many did, many didn’t.”
The most famous rabbinic text of all, often called Pirke Avot or “Ethics of the Fathers” illumines Jesus’ teachings. The Mishnah lies at the center of the Talmud, and Pirke Avot lies at the center of the Mishnah and is in many ways its ideological core. The fact that rabbinic teachers were called “Fathers” is evident from the title. The absolute reverence for the ‘Fathers’ which Jesus sought to overthrow (Matt 23:8-12) is evident in Pirke Avot where Jose ben Joezer says, “Let your house be a meeting house for the sages, and sit in (literally ‘roll in’) the dust of their feet, and drink in their words with thirst” (Avot 1:4). Jesus, as Matthew tells us, sought to create a new egalitarian community of equals. Jesus is the New Moses whose interpretation of the Law is definitive in a way the rabbinic unending legal discussion is not. He is the teacher. We call none else ‘Father.’
Even the famous Rabban Gamaliel seems to be the object of Jesus’ critique when Gamaliel says, “Do not accustom yourself to giving tithes by guesswork (Avot 1:16). A whole tractate of the Mishnah is devoted to spelling out in exquisite detail how one is to offer tithes. Another Tractate Damai is devoted to the question of giving tithes when there is some doubt as to its calculation. While the Mishnah didn’t take its final literary form for about 170 years after Jesus lifetime, the laws of the tithes clearly are in development when Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their anxieties about tithing herbs correctly (Matt 23:23-25).
The early progenitors of the rabbinic movement were known to have commanded a fence to be built around the Torah: “Build a fence around the Torah” (Avot 1:1). The concept here is quite simple: in order to achieve covenant holiness, and to attain the true blessing of the covenant (and ultimate freedom from exile), we must interpret the law so as to insure that we keep it in all its detail. For instance, if the law says, “Don’t drive over 65 mph,” we will legislate a 55 mph speed limit.” This is the secondary fence (rabbinic oral law) around the Torah (biblical written law). This theory which lies at the core of Rabbinic thought had a tendency to lead to endless legal wrangling about exactly what was required by the biblical law and what the rabbis should require to make certain the biblical laws were kept. The system also had a tendency to lead to casuistic special-pleading as Jesus points out in Matthew 23:16-22. For similar reasons, modern Reform Jews also de-emphasize the Talmudic law and seek social justice rather than legal purity.
The thing that many Christians do not see here is that while many of Jesus’ criticisms of the Pharisees were valid in their own right, it is a fact that many other rabbis of Jesus’ day were making similar points and were similarly concerned. Conflict within the rabbinic community between the Hillelites (a more lenient interpreter) and the Shammaites (a stricter interpreter) sometimes has Jesus sounding more like Hillelites and other times (notably on divorce) more like Shammai. It is common knowledge that Jesus sided with Pharisees against the Sadducees on the topic of the resurrection. Many Rabbis at this time were aware of the dangers of hypocrisy and special-pleading the legal system enabled. Other rabbis felt the dangers of the system and sought to ground it in core values and warn against hypocrisy. Finding warnings against hypocrisy such as the following in Pirke Avot are easy to find: “Do his will as if it were your will. Then He will do your will as if it were his will” (Avot 2:4).
It is well-known that Hillel, who lived just a generation before Jesus, once told a would-be convert to Judaism that the primary rule of Judaism was not to do anything to a neighbor (Heb. haber) that one would personally find hateful (Bavli Shab. 31a). The rest, he said, was so much commentary. Some Jews claim that this, in fact, is a higher more challenging moral standard than the positive version of the Golden Rule taught by Jesus since it makes the effect of your actions on others the regulating principle (see The Golden Rule in the Jewish Encyclopedia).
Some have thought that Hillel’s statement, in using Hebrew word haber for ‘friend’ restricts the command to fellow Jewish legal sages as the word sometimes means. But the context speaks otherwise; Hillel says these words to a would-be convert who could hardly qualify as a haber in the advanced sense. In Avot 1:12, Hillel encourages the broadest kind of human sympathy with the exhortation to love your fellow creatures and bring them to Torah. The language he uses here clearly embraces all humanity.
Again, the point here is that there were differences of opinion in Israel already about how crucial the details of legal observance were. Some rabbis already realized that the heart of their faith could be lost in the blizzard of legal opinion and sought to prevent this. Many rabbis were aware of the need to clarify what lies at the heart of the law and to prevent hypocrisy. In words that lie at the beginning of Avot and are sung, to this day in many synagogue services, we read, “On three things the world is sustained: on Torah, on Temple service, and on deeds of loving-kindness” (Avot 1:2). A clearer statement of the legal centrality of love could hardly be imagined.
In a strange way, the New Testament illustrates this Rabbinic interest to place love at the core of the law. In Matthew 22:34, Jesus is asked by a Pharisee which was the greatest commandment. That Jesus’ response was a fairly typical one in Judaism is illustrated in Luke by the story that leads up to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-28). In this case, Jesus asks the legal expert how he understood the law’s basic requirements. The response given sounds almost exactly like the same the opinion Jesus gave in Matthew 22:34. What Jesus does with the following parable is somewhat unique: he makes absolutely explicit that ‘neighbor’ is to be understood radically inclusively; we are commanded not only to love fellow Jews but even Samaritans (thus the following parable). But what is unique is only the explicit inclusion of even Samaritans, not the general principle.
The point of all this is quite simple. While Jesus certainly had abuses in the practice of Pharisaic piety and hypocrisy to condemn, he was not alone. Other rabbis had similar criticisms of their fellows. As Christians often will notice, our faith also has a tendency to bring out the best and the worst in us. Modern believers can easily become hypocritical, legalistic and petty just as the Pharisees of Jesus’ condemnation. Jesus, in the best of his prophetic tradition, called Israel to a higher form of piety and covenant loyalty (Be ye perfect!). He was not alone. In many ways, Hillel would have agreed. Christians could do well to use the term “Pharisaical” more carefully We still casually use the term to mean “spiritually false” or “hypocritical.” Let’s be fair to these poor Pharisees, or we’re not being fair, you see?
In the fall of 1997, I began a graduate program in Bible at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the things that surprised me in studying the Bible with rabbinical students was the degree to which they perceived the New Testament to be fundamentally anti-Jewish. As an orthodox Christian, I found it troubling to hear the teachings of Jesus described as ‘anti-Jewish’ and as contributing factors to Jewish suffering. Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 23 – in which he calls the Pharisees hypocrites, blind-guides, children of hell and much more!– are felt more deeply by Jews than Christians sometimes realize. They know that the Pharisees were direct precursors to the rabbis who shaped the Mishnah which lies at the core of the Talmud.
This discomfort has been only accentuated in hearing Christian children sing silly camp-songs like, “I don’t want to be a Pharisee, ‘cuz they’re not fair, you see.” My daughter who is nine just asked me what I was writing about. When I said “the Pharisees” she responded in song, “I don’t want to be a Pharisee!” To my rabbinical student friends, this is the equivalent to saying, “I would never want to be a rabbi, because they are all a bunch of hypocrites.” A woman once asked me if Jews tire of having a religion made up only of rules and regulations. “It must be so tedious to be legalistic and not have the Holy Spirit.” It is out of these experiences that I wish to write to help Christians know how to think not only about what Jesus says about the Pharisees, but about how this relates to modern Judaism.
It is often said, and worth remembering, that Jesus criticized his contemporaries as an insider much as the prophets of old had done. The church which collected and cherished these teachings of Jesus did so as powerless underdogs. They could not have foreseen or imagined a triumphant Christianity which would later use such texts to justify acts of violence against Jewish neighbors as sometimes has occurred in the history of the Church. As one of my professors, Ellis Rivkin claimed, “The New Testament is not anti-Jewish because Jesus didn’t aim to destroy Israel but to purify it. It was later perverted by Christians who had meaner intentions.”
But more could be said. Was Jesus really right about the Pharisees? Were they hypocrites who didn’t practice what they preached (Matt 23:3)? Were they primarily concerned with spiritual showmanship but not spiritual authenticity (Matt 23:5-7)? Did they emphasize details of the law over the weightier issues like justice, mercy and faithfulness? Did they strain at gnats and swallow camels (23:23-24)? A quick answer might be, “many did, many didn’t.”
The most famous rabbinic text of all, often called Pirke Avot or “Ethics of the Fathers” illumines Jesus’ teachings. The Mishnah lies at the center of the Talmud, and Pirke Avot lies at the center of the Mishnah and is in many ways its ideological core. The fact that rabbinic teachers were called “Fathers” is evident from the title. The absolute reverence for the ‘Fathers’ which Jesus sought to overthrow (Matt 23:8-12) is evident in Pirke Avot where Jose ben Joezer says, “Let your house be a meeting house for the sages, and sit in (literally ‘roll in’) the dust of their feet, and drink in their words with thirst” (Avot 1:4). Jesus, as Matthew tells us, sought to create a new egalitarian community of equals. Jesus is the New Moses whose interpretation of the Law is definitive in a way the rabbinic unending legal discussion is not. He is the teacher. We call none else ‘Father.’
Even the famous Rabban Gamaliel seems to be the object of Jesus’ critique when Gamaliel says, “Do not accustom yourself to giving tithes by guesswork (Avot 1:16). A whole tractate of the Mishnah is devoted to spelling out in exquisite detail how one is to offer tithes. Another Tractate Damai is devoted to the question of giving tithes when there is some doubt as to its calculation. While the Mishnah didn’t take its final literary form for about 170 years after Jesus lifetime, the laws of the tithes clearly are in development when Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their anxieties about tithing herbs correctly (Matt 23:23-25).
The early progenitors of the rabbinic movement were known to have commanded a fence to be built around the Torah: “Build a fence around the Torah” (Avot 1:1). The concept here is quite simple: in order to achieve covenant holiness, and to attain the true blessing of the covenant (and ultimate freedom from exile), we must interpret the law so as to insure that we keep it in all its detail. For instance, if the law says, “Don’t drive over 65 mph,” we will legislate a 55 mph speed limit.” This is the secondary fence (rabbinic oral law) around the Torah (biblical written law). This theory which lies at the core of Rabbinic thought had a tendency to lead to endless legal wrangling about exactly what was required by the biblical law and what the rabbis should require to make certain the biblical laws were kept. The system also had a tendency to lead to casuistic special-pleading as Jesus points out in Matthew 23:16-22. For similar reasons, modern Reform Jews also de-emphasize the Talmudic law and seek social justice rather than legal purity.
The thing that many Christians do not see here is that while many of Jesus’ criticisms of the Pharisees were valid in their own right, it is a fact that many other rabbis of Jesus’ day were making similar points and were similarly concerned. Conflict within the rabbinic community between the Hillelites (a more lenient interpreter) and the Shammaites (a stricter interpreter) sometimes has Jesus sounding more like Hillelites and other times (notably on divorce) more like Shammai. It is common knowledge that Jesus sided with Pharisees against the Sadducees on the topic of the resurrection. Many Rabbis at this time were aware of the dangers of hypocrisy and special-pleading the legal system enabled. Other rabbis felt the dangers of the system and sought to ground it in core values and warn against hypocrisy. Finding warnings against hypocrisy such as the following in Pirke Avot are easy to find: “Do his will as if it were your will. Then He will do your will as if it were his will” (Avot 2:4).
It is well-known that Hillel, who lived just a generation before Jesus, once told a would-be convert to Judaism that the primary rule of Judaism was not to do anything to a neighbor (Heb. haber) that one would personally find hateful (Bavli Shab. 31a). The rest, he said, was so much commentary. Some Jews claim that this, in fact, is a higher more challenging moral standard than the positive version of the Golden Rule taught by Jesus since it makes the effect of your actions on others the regulating principle (see The Golden Rule in the Jewish Encyclopedia).
Some have thought that Hillel’s statement, in using Hebrew word haber for ‘friend’ restricts the command to fellow Jewish legal sages as the word sometimes means. But the context speaks otherwise; Hillel says these words to a would-be convert who could hardly qualify as a haber in the advanced sense. In Avot 1:12, Hillel encourages the broadest kind of human sympathy with the exhortation to love your fellow creatures and bring them to Torah. The language he uses here clearly embraces all humanity.
Again, the point here is that there were differences of opinion in Israel already about how crucial the details of legal observance were. Some rabbis already realized that the heart of their faith could be lost in the blizzard of legal opinion and sought to prevent this. Many rabbis were aware of the need to clarify what lies at the heart of the law and to prevent hypocrisy. In words that lie at the beginning of Avot and are sung, to this day in many synagogue services, we read, “On three things the world is sustained: on Torah, on Temple service, and on deeds of loving-kindness” (Avot 1:2). A clearer statement of the legal centrality of love could hardly be imagined.
In a strange way, the New Testament illustrates this Rabbinic interest to place love at the core of the law. In Matthew 22:34, Jesus is asked by a Pharisee which was the greatest commandment. That Jesus’ response was a fairly typical one in Judaism is illustrated in Luke by the story that leads up to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-28). In this case, Jesus asks the legal expert how he understood the law’s basic requirements. The response given sounds almost exactly like the same the opinion Jesus gave in Matthew 22:34. What Jesus does with the following parable is somewhat unique: he makes absolutely explicit that ‘neighbor’ is to be understood radically inclusively; we are commanded not only to love fellow Jews but even Samaritans (thus the following parable). But what is unique is only the explicit inclusion of even Samaritans, not the general principle.
The point of all this is quite simple. While Jesus certainly had abuses in the practice of Pharisaic piety and hypocrisy to condemn, he was not alone. Other rabbis had similar criticisms of their fellows. As Christians often will notice, our faith also has a tendency to bring out the best and the worst in us. Modern believers can easily become hypocritical, legalistic and petty just as the Pharisees of Jesus’ condemnation. Jesus, in the best of his prophetic tradition, called Israel to a higher form of piety and covenant loyalty (Be ye perfect!). He was not alone. In many ways, Hillel would have agreed. Christians could do well to use the term “Pharisaical” more carefully We still casually use the term to mean “spiritually false” or “hypocritical.” Let’s be fair to these poor Pharisees, or we’re not being fair, you see?
Torture and the Christian Narrative
Here is an article I wrote (only 3 pages) on an issue that made the news earlier this summer. Of course, it functions in the secular world as another reason why Christians and Christianity cannot be trusted as a guide to balanced moral living. What struck me is the way in which understanding the authority of scripture in terms of the narrative of a suffering self-sacrificial God helped to clarify the issue. So here we are to this posting.
Evangelical attitudes concerning torture have been in the public spotlight in the past few weeks. This scrutiny stems from the April 29th release of poll numbers taken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. This poll, found that 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants said torture of suspected terrorists could be often or sometimes justified to obtain important information. The conclusion is the more a person goes to church, the more likely they support torture. These revelations have induced considerable soul-searching among evangelicals according to a May 16 AP story (“Torture debate prompts evangelical soul-searching” by Eric Gorski). Ethicist David Gushee observed that Christians have often failed to be adequately committed to scripture when it comes to the sacredness of life, including the lives of our enemies. In reading his comments, I could not help but wonder how it applies to me and my attitudes about torture.
How I would answer the poll question and why? I find that my own initial impulse is to place national security above all other concerns. We Christians tend to be a law-and-order crowd. Who wants to let terrorists keep information to themselves especially when it would be helpful to protect human lives? If torture is what it takes to pry valuable information out, torture at will! This is indeed my initial impulse. Research has found, as reported in the same story, that often Christian ethical reasoning is based upon common sense rather than upon theological and biblical reflection. Let’s try to remedy this deficit here.
Does Gushee’s critique apply to me? Am I not taking the teachings of Jesus Christ concerning love for enemies (primarily in the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5:43-48) seriously enough? One way I have increasingly understood the authority of scripture is to think in terms of the broader story scripture tells. In other words, for the Christian, the scripture’s great power functions primarily as divine narrative. That is, the Bible is a grand story of God’s great acts of redemption ultimately in Jesus Christ. We believe God was born into a body of human weakness like ours to break the power of sin and set captives free for divine worship and service. In this story we cannot fail to notice that God chose not to respond to sin through violence (even though he could and might have saved lives accordingly), but through self-sacrificial love which came to a climax at Calvary. God embraced the pain of relationship with a sinful humanity on the cross. Some could point to Old Testament violence as warrant for torture but Christians have long affirmed that it is through Christ primarily that our understanding of God is to be shaped. And there is no manipulation in this gospel story, only self-giving love.
Some could argue that I’m misunderstanding the violence inherent in the Christian narrative itself, primarily in terms of hell. Accordingly, God himself is not unwilling to resort to violence in the end-game since he sends sinners to an eternity of torment. I would argue that many biblical passages – Romans 2 is a primary example - portray the wrath of God not as divine judgment but divine abandonment. That is, God’s wrath, at the end of the day, is not so much bringing damnation on the sinner but permission for the sinner to experience the self-inflicted results of their separation from God. Hell, by this understanding, is the logical extension of a life of resisting the divine will. God ultimately lets those who resist divine mercy and grace have their way so as to experience eternal isolation. Be sure, there is perverse pleasure in hell; that of the lost soul shaking his or her fist at God for eternity saying, “I never bent my knee to your will!” So hell can be understood as non-manipulative, non-coercive and even non-violent. True violence would occur if God forced those who wished to remain alone to endure the pleasures of eternity with the righteous.
Let’s apply the logic of the Christian narrative to the question of torture. If God chooses not to respond to sin with violence but with self-sacrificial love, then Gushee’s critique seems to be deeply valid. As a Christian, it seems I ought not support torture under any circumstances. To support torture is to act out of step with the authoritative Christian narrative. Christians are called to live out the Jesus story so that our witness bears faithfulness to its inner logic. Torture involves acts of violence for the sake of self-protection against our known enemies. We are called to embrace the dangers and risks involved in living in a world gone awry as God did in Christ.
Jesus’ command to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48) must be understood in this broader interpretive narrative. The narrative understanding of scriptural authority is critical especially in this regard. Some people take Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount to refer only to their personal ethic: that is, Jesus commands me personally not take vengeance or resort to torture but I can support government actions to do so. Paul seems to do just this in Romans 13:1-7 where he affirms the role of governments to use violence to advance the public good. He even commands Christians to love each other in verse 8ff. There we have it: we are called to non-violence in our personal lives (love one another even our personal enemies) yet to affirm the authority of governments in the public sector that will sometimes include violence (authorities don’t bear the sword in vain). This easy and comfortable logic held the day for me until I began to take seriously the narrative authority of scripture.
If the narrative perspective is correct, non-violence cannot simply be relegated to the private sector. God operates by loving the sinner self-sacrificially on a cosmic and public arena. Jesus notes the cosmic implications of God’s non-manipulative nature in Matt 5:45 saying God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. Therefore we should love our enemies as God who shows no distinction. If we allow the big picture of God’s purposes in the world take precedence, we cannot simply minimize the teachings of Jesus to the private sector. Jesus is our clearest window on the very nature of God. Jesus illustrates these principles of non-coercion in his teachings and at the cross. If to be virtuous is to be godly, and to be godly is to act like God, according to the Christian story, followers of Jesus should seemingly never support torture in any sense. According to our story, God’s self-giving love will conquer all and is more effective than manipulation anyway. You cannot force sinners to repent just the way torture often makes information gained less reliable.
So if we insist on giving precedence to Jesus’ teachings, we have to come back to Rom 13 and ask, “Why did Paul say something so out-of-sync with the divine plan? Did he simply misunderstand?” Paul clearly recognizes the beneficial role of the state in using violence (the sword – in v. 4) to sustain public quiet and welfare. Paul seems to be conceding here that in the intervening period between Christ’s first and second coming, governments have a useful role to play which will sometimes include violence. It is hard to disagree with this common-sense perspective and the application to torture is self-evident.
Paul’s teaching must be read in the light of the political realities of the first century. Paul wanted to make clear that the gospel he preached had no insurrectionist implications. Aspirations of Jewish autonomy were alive and well when Paul wrote. These aspirations, ten years later, in AD 66, led to a major Jewish revolt against Rome which brought about the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple and left thousands of Jews dead. Jesus’ teachings should also be read against this backdrop: that is, loving your enemies immediately meant loving (and praying for!) the Romans. Jesus is also rejecting insurrection against Rome as a mechanism for advancing the Kingdom of God (a popular notion in the day). So Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings have a similar backdrop and purpose: no bearing arms against the government no matter how tempting.
But how can we account for the fact that Paul seems to go further by affirming the role of the sword? We cannot simply say, “The sword represents authority generally.” No, the sword is unambiguously an implement of violence and Paul says governments use the sword as servants of God’s justice (Rom 13:6). Here perhaps I feel compelled to compromise. On the one hand, the church must consistently bear witness to God’s non-violent narrative to be faithful disciples of our Lord. Yet, we with Paul, can recognize that in this world, there are times when governments will be required to resort to violence. To be faithful, we can perhaps say that violence (torture in this case) is acceptable only under extreme circumstances. Rather than often or sometimes being acceptable (as the poll indicates most evangelicals presently believe), perhaps it would be best to say torture is rarely acceptable. Christians like Paul could affirm the role of the state while personally refraining from participation in all acts of coercion.
Here are some suggested circumstances. Torture could be acceptable only when dealing with 1) a known terrorist who 2) is almost certain to have knowledge of future attacks, when 3) this intelligence is likely to be actionable so as to save many lives and 4) all other non-violent measures have been taken and 5) the timing is such that information is immediately necessary and 6) torture has been shown to be an effective tool of attaining reliable information. The last point itself is highly unlikely since torture itself tends to taint information. With such strictures in place, we may be able to affirm that we are doing our utmost to love the enemy while recognizing the role of government to assure public welfare and safety. Torture, accordingly, is rarely if ever theologically licit.
Furthermore, I would personally be unwilling to participate in torture and would encourage other disciples of Jesus to make the same choice. While this may strike some as a half-measure, in a world of tremendous moral ambiguity, it is a posture that strives for faithfulness to the non-violent nature of the Christian narrative while realistic to the duties of those in government to provide for national security. Torture is not only dehumanizing to the tortured but to the torturer. I wish to thank Drs. Cindy Wesley, Manning Garrett and Matthew Francis and Ben Kickert for their helpful insights in writing this piece. Most of them disagree thinking that torture should never in any circumstances be allowable. I find myself inclined to agree but not willing to eliminate torture in special cases as outlined here and for these reasons.
Evangelical attitudes concerning torture have been in the public spotlight in the past few weeks. This scrutiny stems from the April 29th release of poll numbers taken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. This poll, found that 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants said torture of suspected terrorists could be often or sometimes justified to obtain important information. The conclusion is the more a person goes to church, the more likely they support torture. These revelations have induced considerable soul-searching among evangelicals according to a May 16 AP story (“Torture debate prompts evangelical soul-searching” by Eric Gorski). Ethicist David Gushee observed that Christians have often failed to be adequately committed to scripture when it comes to the sacredness of life, including the lives of our enemies. In reading his comments, I could not help but wonder how it applies to me and my attitudes about torture.
How I would answer the poll question and why? I find that my own initial impulse is to place national security above all other concerns. We Christians tend to be a law-and-order crowd. Who wants to let terrorists keep information to themselves especially when it would be helpful to protect human lives? If torture is what it takes to pry valuable information out, torture at will! This is indeed my initial impulse. Research has found, as reported in the same story, that often Christian ethical reasoning is based upon common sense rather than upon theological and biblical reflection. Let’s try to remedy this deficit here.
Does Gushee’s critique apply to me? Am I not taking the teachings of Jesus Christ concerning love for enemies (primarily in the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5:43-48) seriously enough? One way I have increasingly understood the authority of scripture is to think in terms of the broader story scripture tells. In other words, for the Christian, the scripture’s great power functions primarily as divine narrative. That is, the Bible is a grand story of God’s great acts of redemption ultimately in Jesus Christ. We believe God was born into a body of human weakness like ours to break the power of sin and set captives free for divine worship and service. In this story we cannot fail to notice that God chose not to respond to sin through violence (even though he could and might have saved lives accordingly), but through self-sacrificial love which came to a climax at Calvary. God embraced the pain of relationship with a sinful humanity on the cross. Some could point to Old Testament violence as warrant for torture but Christians have long affirmed that it is through Christ primarily that our understanding of God is to be shaped. And there is no manipulation in this gospel story, only self-giving love.
Some could argue that I’m misunderstanding the violence inherent in the Christian narrative itself, primarily in terms of hell. Accordingly, God himself is not unwilling to resort to violence in the end-game since he sends sinners to an eternity of torment. I would argue that many biblical passages – Romans 2 is a primary example - portray the wrath of God not as divine judgment but divine abandonment. That is, God’s wrath, at the end of the day, is not so much bringing damnation on the sinner but permission for the sinner to experience the self-inflicted results of their separation from God. Hell, by this understanding, is the logical extension of a life of resisting the divine will. God ultimately lets those who resist divine mercy and grace have their way so as to experience eternal isolation. Be sure, there is perverse pleasure in hell; that of the lost soul shaking his or her fist at God for eternity saying, “I never bent my knee to your will!” So hell can be understood as non-manipulative, non-coercive and even non-violent. True violence would occur if God forced those who wished to remain alone to endure the pleasures of eternity with the righteous.
Let’s apply the logic of the Christian narrative to the question of torture. If God chooses not to respond to sin with violence but with self-sacrificial love, then Gushee’s critique seems to be deeply valid. As a Christian, it seems I ought not support torture under any circumstances. To support torture is to act out of step with the authoritative Christian narrative. Christians are called to live out the Jesus story so that our witness bears faithfulness to its inner logic. Torture involves acts of violence for the sake of self-protection against our known enemies. We are called to embrace the dangers and risks involved in living in a world gone awry as God did in Christ.
Jesus’ command to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48) must be understood in this broader interpretive narrative. The narrative understanding of scriptural authority is critical especially in this regard. Some people take Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount to refer only to their personal ethic: that is, Jesus commands me personally not take vengeance or resort to torture but I can support government actions to do so. Paul seems to do just this in Romans 13:1-7 where he affirms the role of governments to use violence to advance the public good. He even commands Christians to love each other in verse 8ff. There we have it: we are called to non-violence in our personal lives (love one another even our personal enemies) yet to affirm the authority of governments in the public sector that will sometimes include violence (authorities don’t bear the sword in vain). This easy and comfortable logic held the day for me until I began to take seriously the narrative authority of scripture.
If the narrative perspective is correct, non-violence cannot simply be relegated to the private sector. God operates by loving the sinner self-sacrificially on a cosmic and public arena. Jesus notes the cosmic implications of God’s non-manipulative nature in Matt 5:45 saying God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. Therefore we should love our enemies as God who shows no distinction. If we allow the big picture of God’s purposes in the world take precedence, we cannot simply minimize the teachings of Jesus to the private sector. Jesus is our clearest window on the very nature of God. Jesus illustrates these principles of non-coercion in his teachings and at the cross. If to be virtuous is to be godly, and to be godly is to act like God, according to the Christian story, followers of Jesus should seemingly never support torture in any sense. According to our story, God’s self-giving love will conquer all and is more effective than manipulation anyway. You cannot force sinners to repent just the way torture often makes information gained less reliable.
So if we insist on giving precedence to Jesus’ teachings, we have to come back to Rom 13 and ask, “Why did Paul say something so out-of-sync with the divine plan? Did he simply misunderstand?” Paul clearly recognizes the beneficial role of the state in using violence (the sword – in v. 4) to sustain public quiet and welfare. Paul seems to be conceding here that in the intervening period between Christ’s first and second coming, governments have a useful role to play which will sometimes include violence. It is hard to disagree with this common-sense perspective and the application to torture is self-evident.
Paul’s teaching must be read in the light of the political realities of the first century. Paul wanted to make clear that the gospel he preached had no insurrectionist implications. Aspirations of Jewish autonomy were alive and well when Paul wrote. These aspirations, ten years later, in AD 66, led to a major Jewish revolt against Rome which brought about the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple and left thousands of Jews dead. Jesus’ teachings should also be read against this backdrop: that is, loving your enemies immediately meant loving (and praying for!) the Romans. Jesus is also rejecting insurrection against Rome as a mechanism for advancing the Kingdom of God (a popular notion in the day). So Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings have a similar backdrop and purpose: no bearing arms against the government no matter how tempting.
But how can we account for the fact that Paul seems to go further by affirming the role of the sword? We cannot simply say, “The sword represents authority generally.” No, the sword is unambiguously an implement of violence and Paul says governments use the sword as servants of God’s justice (Rom 13:6). Here perhaps I feel compelled to compromise. On the one hand, the church must consistently bear witness to God’s non-violent narrative to be faithful disciples of our Lord. Yet, we with Paul, can recognize that in this world, there are times when governments will be required to resort to violence. To be faithful, we can perhaps say that violence (torture in this case) is acceptable only under extreme circumstances. Rather than often or sometimes being acceptable (as the poll indicates most evangelicals presently believe), perhaps it would be best to say torture is rarely acceptable. Christians like Paul could affirm the role of the state while personally refraining from participation in all acts of coercion.
Here are some suggested circumstances. Torture could be acceptable only when dealing with 1) a known terrorist who 2) is almost certain to have knowledge of future attacks, when 3) this intelligence is likely to be actionable so as to save many lives and 4) all other non-violent measures have been taken and 5) the timing is such that information is immediately necessary and 6) torture has been shown to be an effective tool of attaining reliable information. The last point itself is highly unlikely since torture itself tends to taint information. With such strictures in place, we may be able to affirm that we are doing our utmost to love the enemy while recognizing the role of government to assure public welfare and safety. Torture, accordingly, is rarely if ever theologically licit.
Furthermore, I would personally be unwilling to participate in torture and would encourage other disciples of Jesus to make the same choice. While this may strike some as a half-measure, in a world of tremendous moral ambiguity, it is a posture that strives for faithfulness to the non-violent nature of the Christian narrative while realistic to the duties of those in government to provide for national security. Torture is not only dehumanizing to the tortured but to the torturer. I wish to thank Drs. Cindy Wesley, Manning Garrett and Matthew Francis and Ben Kickert for their helpful insights in writing this piece. Most of them disagree thinking that torture should never in any circumstances be allowable. I find myself inclined to agree but not willing to eliminate torture in special cases as outlined here and for these reasons.
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